"And if he left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you'd be? ... You'd be nowhere. Why, you're only a sort of thing in his dream! If that there King was to wake you'd go out -- bang! -- just like a candle!"

"Hush! You'll be waking him, I'm afraid, if you make so much noise."

"Well it's no use your talking about waking him when you're only one of the things in his dream. You know very well you're not real."

Saturday, May 21, 2005

Look what I got in the mail today:

Suzanne and I exchanged books, which I have to admit, was not only her idea but the best idea I've heard in a long time. This morning I woke up, thought about grading more papers, went downstairs to the mailbox hoping Red Paper Flower had arrived, and there it was. A gem on a sunny Saturday morning, and a signed gem, at that. First thing I thought: here is the person after all. She blogs, I know, but look: she signs in both blue ink and black, in cursive, with her hand and two pens. And with her hands she put this gem into an envelope, addressed it with her pens and penmanship, and sent it to me, from her house and lovely garden in the east to my place here in the midwest. If that ain't magic, I don't know what is. And she does all kinds of things in this little book that I can't do. I don't know how you do all of this, for example, in one tiny lyric narrative, but God I admire it--I've been looking at this poem all day:

The First Signs

And forsythia tumblesover the fencewild with yellow--

When I was seven a wasplanded on my lipdrawn by the sweetnessof my mother's red lipstick.

--while purple flagstonessplit with grass

The same day a child next doorsqueezed six new kittens dead.That's when I knew--